The Dragon
Character Analysis

Though he is dismissive of Grendel, the dragon is the closest thing Grendel has to a mentor or intellectual companion. Able to see the past, present, and future, the dragon attempts to teach Grendel about the humans, time, space, and the universe. He gives Grendel the idea that the humans actually need him in order to better define and improve themselves, and tells Grendel that all things perish and that when considered in relation to all of eternity, all life is essentially meaningless. The dragon presents the most coherent and persuasive philosophical system in the novel, but can also be seen as selfish and greedy: all he does is stay in his cave and count his hoard of treasure. The dragon also grants Grendel invulnerability against the humans’ weapons, which allows Grendel to terrorize the humans easily but also takes some of the joy out of it for Grendel.

The Dragon Quotes in Grendel

The Grendel quotes below are all either spoken by The Dragon or refer to The Dragon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of Grendel published in 1989.

Chapter 1
Quotes

The king has lofty theories of his own. “Theories,” I whisper to the bloodstained ground. So the dragon once spoke. (“They’d map out roads through Hell with their crackpot theories!” I recall his laugh.)

“A swirl in the stream of time. A temporary gathering of bits, a few random dust specks, so to speak—pure metaphor, you understand—then by chance a vast floating cloud of dustspecks, an expanding universe—” He shrugged. “Complexities: green dust as well as the regular kind. Purple dust. Gold. Additional refinements: sensitive dust, copulating dust, worshipful dust!”

“Ah, Grendel!” he said. He seemed that instant almost to rise to pity. “You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves.”

I discovered that the dragon had put a charm on me: no weapon could cut me. I could walk up to the meadhall whenever I pleased, and they were powerless. My heart became darker because of that. Though I scorned them, sometimes hated them, there had been something between myself and men when we could fight. Now, invulnerable, I was as solitary as one live tree in a vast landscape of coal.

The dragon explained his own personal ambition: to count all of his treasure. He advises Grendel, “know...
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Chapter 6

After his meeting with the dragon, Grendel felt an air of futility and doom around himself. Also, the dragon had put...
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Chapter 7

...the humans. Grendel thinks that his enemies do define themselves against him, just as the dragon said. He could kill all of Hrothgar’s men in one night, but he restrains himself,...
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...in his cave, Grendel was frustrated by the humans’ merriment. Although he had met the dragon and knew that the world was meaningless, he was tempted by the humans’ arrogant self-importance...
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Chapter 10

Grendel is profoundly bored and sick of the scent of the dragon that is around him, accompanying his protective charm. He watches a goat climb the rock...
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